Sunday, April 01, 2007

Dark matter film: Crime in scientific fields.

In November of 1991, Gang Lu, a Chinese youth, ex-graduate from a Doctorate of Physics of the University of Iowa, opened fire killing their adviser, the boss of the Program of Physics and 4 people but. As long as the physical youth one commits suicide the causes of so painful event even give cause to many speculations. Nevertheless, everything suggests that the main motivation resides in the impossibility that the doctoral thesis of Gang Lu, won the prize Spriesterbach, granted to his previous roommate and rival Linhua Shan. Chen Shi Zheng, graduate of the University of New York for that time and expert of many conflicts between Chinese students and their American advisers, reminds a poster of that time expressing "long life to Lu."Shing-Tung Yau, mathematical of Harvard mentor of many young mathematicians adds that Chinese families wait much of their children, turning them in highly competitive. Lu, was part of a family recruited in 1980, to come to Iowa to study the physics of plasm. Gerald Payne, professor of Physics in Iowa says that they were exceptional students, that Lu was competitive but not very sociable and that he lived alone. As Lu, before dying accused the official of his misfortune, Dr. Payne sustains that as much his adviser as the Physical Boss, tried to help him and they had given him recommendation letters for jobs. But Lu, would not have been realistic in their demands.

Everything suggests that the deep causes of this murder would lie in an inadequate relationship : adviser (consultant)/postgraduate, as long as the advisers, recommend, suggest when to defend the thesis and value the work, been pressed by the necessity of carrying out original contributions, a process that sometimes bears to desafectión and fights against feuds of long life. The postgraduates are like apprentices, said Michael Turner, cosmologist of the university of Chicago -the union among an adviser and a graduating is lifetime link, similar to a marriage-. James Dickerson, physic of the University of Vanderbilt adds that some Asians are marginalized and isolated of the community and American culture, because they are smart, work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Although with certain attachés of fiction, much of the above-mentioned is recreated in the movie Dark Matter, directed by Chen Shi-zheng, written by Billy Shebary and starring for Liu Ye, Aidan Quinn and Meryl Streep. The film wins the Alfred P. Sloan Prizeat the Sundance Film Festival in the 2007.